The Fall of the Church|Joseph Long
At a time of increasing violations of human rights and religious freedom in China, it is both astonishing and bewildering to see the renewal of the secret agreement signed between China and the Vatican for two more years – all the more so when one considers the fact that, if anything, the persecution of Christians in the country has intensified since the signing of the deal in 2018: there have been numerous accounts of crosses being removed from churches and crucifixes being desecrated; underground clergymen and parishioners are being abducted on a regular basis; religious education is banned for minors and those who are under the age of 18 are prohibited from so much as entering a place of worship.
And as if the agreement had not done enough harm to the faithful in China, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said last week that the Church’s intension was for the agreement to be prolonged and “continue to be adopted ‘ad experimentum’”. The Vatican’s complete blindness and indifference to the tribulations that Chinese Catholics are currently suffering under the ferocious rule of Xi and his cronies cannot be better manifested: for Cardinal Parolin, the agreement is no more than a diplomatic experiment conducted for the sake of political expediency.
Whilst its details have never been made public, the Sino-Vatican agreement acknowledges the rôle of the state-controlled patriotic association in the appointment of bishops. In exchange for the nominal recognition of the Pope’s religious authority over the Catholic Church in China by the Chinese regime, the Vatican conceded the power of nominating its bishop candidates to the Chinese state; the Pope purportedly “regained” the right to appoint bishops to Catholic sees in China, yet he has to do it from a list of candidates compiled by the regime. As a result of the agreement, the Chinese authorities have, since 2018, been able to exert full control over the selection of Catholic bishops through providing a list of handpicked, loyal candidates for the Pope to ceremoniously set his hand to.
In a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, in 1785, Thomas Jefferson offered this advice: “Whenever you are to do a thing tho' it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.” This gold standard test of honourability (“act as if no one is watching”) suggested by Jefferson over two hundred years ago could perhaps shed some light on the “provisional agreement” made between the Vatican and China on the appointment of bishops: if it was really such a good (and honorable) deal for the Vatican, as Parolin has always insisted, why would they want to keep it secret?
It is not hard to understand why both China and the Holy See want to keep the details of the agreement secret. For the Vatican, the signing of the deal is not at all an honorable act, as one source close to the Holy See conceded: “While it’s not a good agreement, it’s better than no agreement, and there’s hope it can be improved”. The Vatican had been passive throughout the secret negotiations with China prior to setting their hands to the agreement and it was strictly on China’s terms that the negotiations were conducted. Nothing was mentioned with regards to the question of the underground bishops and priests as well as the status of the so-called “Chinese bishops' conference”, a state-run organization whose membership is confined to state-appointed “bishops”. In exchange for the nominal recognition of the Pope’s authority in the state-run church, the Vatican abandoned its belief and principles by allowing the Chinese to dominate the process of the selection of bishop, which has essentially reduced the Pope to nothing but a rubber stamp. The underground church was sold out completely by this abhorrent act of betrayal on the part of the Holy See: underground bishops, who have been faithful to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church all along despite the persecutions, were asked to give way to the state-endorsed opportunists, many of whom were excommunicated during the papacy of Benedict XVI. Many of those underground bishops who were asked to give way by the Vatican were later found to be sleeping rough on the streets; some were abducted by the Chinese authorities and never to be seen again. Not a syllable was uttered by the Pope nor the Holy See when the Chinese wreaked vengeance on the underground church after the deal was struck. One cannot help but to think that the Church does have a peculiar idea of rewarding its faithful servants.
As for China, the secrecy of the agreement holds the key to keeping its tight grip on the Catholic Church in the country. That the Vatican acquiesced in keeping the agreement secret has effectively given the Chinese authorities a blank cheque to usurp upon the underground church; those who are reluctant to join the state-run church and party-controlled patriotic association no longer have the luxury to stay underground. Whilst it is clearly a schismatic act as well as a violation of the Catholic faith for a Catholic to join the patriotic association – on which Pope Pius XII wrote: “But in reality they seek, in a word, to establish finally among you a ‘national’ church, which no longer could be Catholic because it would be the negation of that universality or rather ‘catholicity’ by which the society truly founded by Jesus Christ is above all nations and embraces them one and all.” – the Vatican, which is now under the stewardship of Pope Francis, does not seem to be bothered at all by the fact that millions of Catholics are now forced, and indeed have its blessings to be forced, to join an organization which is run by an atheistic regime and whose founding principles are fundamentally incompatible with the doctrines of the One, Apostolic, and Catholic Church.
It does not take a genius to see that, with Cardinal Parolin at the helm of the Roman Curia’s Secretariat of State and Pope Francis preference for political expediency over the faith, the future prospects of the Catholic Church will be nothing short of a catastrophe, and whose moral authority will take decades to rebuild, if at all.
(Joseph Long is a London-based writer and linguist from Hong Kong. He is a Philosophy graduate of King’s College London and has been a member of the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom since February 2020.)
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